Comedy is a strange beast.

One man’s wife can be another man’s comedy.

Still, if you don’t laugh when you write the stuff, nobody else will either, most likely. Your own sense of humour is the greatest asset you can have as a comedy writer.

Most of your audience has grown up with comedy all around them. Cinema, radio, comics, christmas crackers have all added to the store of comedy awareness.

So, a writer can assume a certain recognition from the audience; but a good writer will try to outwit them with a comedic twist.

Most comedy runs to a beat of ba-doom, ba-doom, ba-dang, where ba-dang is the ultimate pay-off anticipated by the audience; but unseen by the victim.

Stand-up on the other hand is a two-beat effort where a funny is set up and knocked down again. It could be seen as a form of wit, where one person says something and another reacts, except that both sides are delivered by the same person, hecklers apart.

Situation comedies rely on building a gag and on the audience's familiarity with the characters or the situation.

Movies build comedy over a longer time span and a writer can rely to some extent on a captive audience to re-throw a funny at them many scenes later.

Comedy can be one of the hardest types of writing to accomplish with a flourish.

Still, a laugh a day keeps the banshee at bay, as some desperate comedy writer must have said, sometime.

For lively club discussion on writing comedy see here.
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